I gotta ask the real New Yorkers this one little question-
What are you doing *right now *that is so damned important that your collective behaviour makes the city so damned hectic and known as ‘fast-paced’?
C’mon, half of youse are on the SDMB right now, and the other half are doing something else entirely, so what gives? I used to live outside of Washington D.C. and it was different- we were all too busy just being self-important to stop and give directions to out of town rubes.
I mean really, it’s just a city of several million people living their lives and doing their thing all at once.
You have clearly never been to Boston either…people here are notorious for not using turn signals at all. (Divulging your intentions to other drivers is perceived as a sign of weakness…you keep your options open in traffic and other cars treat you with respect!)
You realize of course the Seinfeld Soup Nazi character was based on a real person, a guy who had a restaurant in NYC that sold soup? By all accounts the Seinfeld portrayal was quite accurate.
I can’t decide whether the real guy’s apparent outrage over his portrayal is disheartening or hysterically funny. It totally reinforces the image… being offended is exactly how the Soup Nazi would react! It’s a horrible, wonderful Catch-22.
Elton John pretty much summed up the “fast pace” of NYC: If we’re all going somewhere, let’s get there soon: this song has no title, just words and a tune.
Got it in one! I was going to make that very comment - New Yorkers are brusque. Places to go, people to see, etc.
The only rudeness I see when in Manhattan is rudeness that I probably commit, to be honest: People tend to dodge in front of me to get where they’re going more quickly, even though I’m already going at a good clip - I don’t mosey. Irritates the hell out of me. And I do it, but I only do it to weave around moseying, gaping masses. Or so I believe.
That’s just the thing. There’s a time and a place for everything. Approach and talk to me when I’m at a bar or otherwise socializing or have free time, and I am accommodating. Approach when I’m on the way to work, or to a meeting – chances are I’m in a hurry.
It’s not uncommon for people to try to get your attention while you’re walking in the city. Some of them are beggars, others are trying to advertise, some have political motivations. I don’t have time for any of them. If someone addresses me on the street, they have a very brief window to keep my attention. If I hear something like, “How do I get to…” I’ll stop and be as helpful as I can be. If instead I hear: “spare some…” or “people are suffer…” or if they attempt to hand me something, then I say “no thanks” and keep walking.
I honestly think New Yorkers are very friendly, but under the right circumstances. I understand why some tourists might think differently, but it’s usually their own fault. For instance, sidewalks here are treated like streets. If you’re driving on the highway and need to look at a map, do you stop in the middle of the street or do you pull to the side of the road? If you’re on a three lane highway, do you line up with the cars in the other two lanes and drive at a snail’s pace or do you vary speed and allow room to pass? Yet I see people all the time just stopping in the middle of the sidewalk or walking hand in hand with their family (taking up the entire sidewalk), or standing in a group gazing at a building during commuting hours without any realization that they’re IN THE WAY. More often than not, they will be told.
As pointed out, location is not shown in the post for guests. However, their location IS shown in their public profile if it is filled in. So, try clicking on their name in the post and select “View Public Profile”, and hopefully they have filled in their location field. I have no idea why they don’t show it in the posts for guests… I’m guessing it’s an artifact of the old membership system that hasn’t been fixed yet.
I actually learned to drive . . . took driving lessons . . . in Manhattan, sometimes during rush hour! Looking back, I pity the instructor.
After relocating to Cleveland, I have to laugh when they refer to “rush hour” here. I mean the traffic’s actually still moving; to me that’s not rush hour. Not compared to the Long Island Expressway (“the world’s longest parking lot”).
But I don’t get the rudeness thing either. Sure, you have to be a little more assertive sometimes in NYC, and I can understand tourists interpreting that as rudeness . . . but it’s not. It’s just that they have to deal with a lot more in a given amount of time, and have to be more focused.
And by the way, I’ve been to Paris several times, and the only rudeness I experienced was from other tourists (American or German).
But a word of advice to tourists, whether in New York or anywhere else: If you have to stop and look at a map and figure out where the hell you are . . . don’t just stop in the middle of a crowded sidewalk, where other people are trying to get to work. If they’re rude to you, you asked for it.
As a Midwesterner, I think New York Citizens are extremely friendly and helpful – just in a kind of in your face/I’m in a hurry, so I’ll tell you everything you need to know but just once so LISTEN FER CHRISSAKES kind of way.
One of my favorite stories was when I tried to get a cab from my hotel to the west side on a Saturday morning. It wasn’t a particularly long ride, and the first cabbie in line didn’t want to lose a big fare to one of the airports. A bystander jumped into start yelling at the cabbie that he couldn’t turn down, my goddam fare and he had to take me to the goddam west side or any goddam where else I goddam wanted to go and what was his goddam medallion number anyway fer chrissakes. A complete stranger, stepping in to help a tourist.
No way in hell would I actually drive in Manhattan, though.
I’ve never been to New York so I really have no idea how New Yorkers are, but I’m curious about these comments that they are busy and have no time to waste, and therefore they sometimes appear rude. Why would people have less time to waste in New York than anywhere else in the world? People actually have things to do in the rest of the world too.
I have to get on the subway in the mornings by 6:15 if I want a seat. If you stop me for some dumb tourist chit-chat on my way to the subway at 6:10 I will therefore rip off your head and shit in it. If I want to grab lunch, I’ll have to stand in line at the deli and shout my order to the counter-guy–if you get in my way because youre a dumb fucking yokel who wants to yak about what are all these weird sandwiches they sell here, and I’m waiting an extra five minutes, I will rip off your head and shit in it.
Otherwise I’m a nice guy and helpful to tourists.
Now in Yokelsburg, there may be a regular transit schedule ,and plenty of room to sit and leisurely eateries and casual work schedules, but this city puts pressure on us to get things done quickly and efficiently, and there are lots of us in competition to stay here and get promoted and find decent housing and thast elusive parkng spot. It’s a lot of pressure, and not for everyone, but some of us have assimilated its inconveniences into our daily lives, so much so that we hardly notice how it affects our dealings with each other–we dispense with many of the usual amenities.
And not a story anyone particularly wants to get into. I lived in the area 18 years, and finally came to the conclusion that the New York runs on negative energy applied in positive ways.
NYers so often manage to channel that negativity into ambition, creativity, concern, excellence, and various flavors of what we call “vibrancy.” But basically there’s an unspoken understanding: it’s a tough place, and a lot depends on keeping it a tough place. And that means honoring a common myth. Withholding patience and small courtesies and breathing room until some test is passed - necessity or familiarity or whatever. It’s as if all that is psychic training for the proper temperament. The source of the energy that makes it all run is mythic.
As a middle westerner by temperament if not by tastes, I constantly was pulled both ways by NY and NYers. I finally decided that the mad-on I got from being hurried by impatient people was not so much because of how fast-paced things needed to be, but how fast-paced people wanted them to be.
That straight-ahead impersonality is not a natural artifact - maybe it once was - but it’s now a cultural value. And I think it’s a very important one to NY, because it keeps people hyperfocused. A lot of those positive NY traits have to do with provincial arrogance, which is a kind of hyperfocus, and a lot more have to do with obsession, which is another kind.
The more perspective people get on NY and what makes it work, the more jaded they’re likely to get about NY. And that’s suicide, because it’s the end of being a NYer and belonging to the great civilization, the only civilization. After that, goes the myth, everything is less, everything is down.
Not fuh nuttin’, as they say back in civilization.
I think maybe being in NY requires you to retune your bullshit detector from broadband (mass psychology, organizations, institutions) to selective (individuals and small groups). Otherwise your head will split from the cognitive dissonance, and that’s bad, because tolerating some level of cognitive dissonance is what makes the place tick.
What people don’t like to say about NYC is that it is very, very inconvenient on certain levels. Most people commute significant distances daily; few people own cars so suburban style weekend chore blitzes are impossible (you cannot, for instance, shop for the month or even the week in one go, if you have to walk/take the bus home.) As much as we love our public transportation, trains and busses on occasion do run late/break down/inexplicably never arrive. Hence the NYC love of the yiddish term “schlep” - an annoyingly arduous trip. (Newark airport, ugh, it’s such a schlep). Especially in the case of public transit, it really is possible to have a huge number of people running late all at the same time.
So its not only or entirely that New Yorkers have less time to waste than elsewhere - its just that a lot of their time is routinely wasted.